


Easter Surprise: the Return of the Master

by were_lemur



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, The Master has a Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day, cracktacular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-30
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-07 00:16:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/741867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/were_lemur/pseuds/were_lemur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Master thought that once he escaped from the Time Lock, his troubles would be over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easter Surprise: the Return of the Master

The Master had barely gotten out of the Time Lock when his plans started to go wrong.

The Type 70 TARDIS he'd stolen let out a moaning wheeze as it fought to materialize. It barely managed, with a final lurch. A bang reverberated through it, and the lights went out. Then it pitched over, tossing the Master into midair. He bounced off the wall, just in time to be thrown against the Time Rotor as the TARDIS rolled again. It tumbled end-over-end, rattling the Master like a die in a cup.

He curled into a ball, one arm wrapped around his face, the other protecting the back of his neck. Just in time; another fall threw him into backward against the console. The edge slammed into the point of his elbow, sending red sparks of pain up his arm, but that was better than losing a regeneration to a broken neck.

He seemed to hit every wall, edge and corner in the control room, some of them multiple times, before he finally landed on a slanted surface and slid down, wincing occasionally as the edges of a roundel caught his arm or hip, to land shoulder-first. The TARDIS seemed to have fallen was far as it was going to; after a long moment, he cautiously uncoiled himself, and began to assess the situation.

His right forearm was still tingling, he'd bitten his tongue, and he suspected that he'd be more bruised than otherwise in a few hours, but he'd escaped major injury, thanks to the padded Chancellery Guard's uniform. 

More worrisome was the condition of the TARDIS. If life support was down, he was limited to the amount of oxygen in the control room, as he'd had to sacrifice all the rest of the internal architecture to get enough momentum to escape the Time Lock.

It didn't take him long to find the door; he was sitting on it.

He yanked off his gloves and began to pry at the crack in the door with his fingernails. Finally, he got enough of a grip to pull it open. He gritted his teeth and leaned back; at first it barely seemed to move, but then it flopped open, sending him sprawling.

He wasn't surprised to find that the door opened onto a solid surface. He pressed his fingers down and felt rock; not good. He knew that the air wouldn't be running short yet, but his breath still felt tight.

If he could hollow out enough room to climb down and pull the TARDIS door shut, he would only have to lift its outer weight. It would be difficult, but not impossible.

But there was still that solid rock surface. He could only guess how far down it went.

In the worst case, he thought grimly, he could use his own regeneration energy to do the damage. It wasn't as if he had to be careful anymore; he had the regenerations he'd stolen from Rassilon, and though it had cost him several to patch up damage Lucy had done, the old hypocrite hadn't bothered limiting himself to thirteen.

But dying of asphyxia wasn't his idea of a good time. And the thought of the last decades of his original regeneration cycle, the endless agony of his dying body, made him shudder even now. He'd learned that lesson, thank you very much. He was through wasting lives.

He pulled out his staser pistol. It wouldn't do direct damage to stone, only to flesh. But if he set it on overload ...

He ran the calculations in his head. It might work.

Working by feel, it seemed to take forever. But finally, he felt the pistol's grip warm alarmingly. He dropped it into the doorway and muscled the door over on top of it. It closed just in time; the explosion reverberated through the TARDIS, and rocked it; for a moment he thought it might tip it over onto its side, but then it settled down.

He was definitely feeling the oxygen grow thin, as he wrestled the door open again; it was getting harder to work. He pressed one hand down -- and found loose soil.

An improvement, at least.

He dug with his bare hands for a few minutes, but then had a better idea. His helmet worked as an improvised shovel, and he scooped dirt and tossed it onto the TARDIS's wall.

His breath was coming short, now; a human, with their less efficient lungs, would have passed out already. His hearts pounded in his ears, reminding him of the drums he'd so recently gotten rid of. He swallowed against a rising tide of nausea.

Finally, he'd hollowed enough room to slide down in. His vision was dancing with spots as he got the TARDIS door up and tilted over, and lay down with it over him. It reminded him that a lot of species buried their dead, but he shoved the thought away.

The TARDIS door clicked shut, and he was committed.

For a brief, horrifying moment, he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to do it. But desperation lent him strength; he pushed his arms straight, and he saw a ray of light, caught a breath of industrial-smelling air that still smelled ridiculously sweet.

That was enough to get his legs up and push. The TARDIS tilted, and toppled, leaving him lying in the dirt, panting, aching, but alive.

Just in time for the first raindrops to hit his face.

He staggered to his feet, and leaned against the tipped-over TARDIS. Its chameleon circuit was as dead the rest of it; it was a plain gray rectangle. It would probably fade into the gray mist that surrounded him.

To one side, he saw the slope he'd fallen down; a rocky, scrub-covered hillside that stretched up into the gloom above him. He could see the path that the TARDIS had carved in the dirt.

It had been just bad luck that he'd landed on a cracked and tilted cement slab that looked like it had once been the foundation of a house. The broken remains of a road led away into the woods.

He retrieved the uniform helmet and gloves from the TARDIS -- the rain was getting harder, and at least they would keep his head dry and his hands warm. It was better than nothing, and he didn't know how far he'd have to walk in order to reach civilization -- or whatever passed for it, on whatever planet he'd landed on.

He'd meant to head for Rovicandra. The preindustrial planet, on the far side of nowhere, had been his first conquest when he'd left Gallifrey. It had been too easy; he'd left out of sheer boredom. But not without leaving a backdoor into the culture, so that he'd be able to come back if he needed a refuge. he'd never been desperate enough to need one ... but after escaping the Time Lock, he had.

Except he was almost certain that he'd landed somewhere else. The foliage was different, and while technological development a thousand or so years past his first visit could have accounted for the scent of smog in the air, it felt like a desperate reach on his part.

No, based on the look of the local plant life and the ruins he'd encountered, he was back on Earth; not a piece of information to improve his mood. Depending on where he was, the level of pollution could put him anywhere from the mid-twentieth to mid-twenty-first century.

The clouds seemed to open completely, now. Water trickled down the collar of his stolen uniform. He was tempted to head back to the dead TARDIS; if nothing else, it would provide shelter. But he kept trudging forward.

There was nowhere on Earth, in any time period, that the uniform of a Chancellery Guard would blend in. Hideous though it had been from an aesthetic standpoint, at least the hoodie he'd worn previously hadn't made him look like he was on his way to a fancy-dress party.

Not that there was anyone to see him.

Finally, the road started looking less ragged. He even saw some paint; a center divider and markings, clearly indicating that people were expected to drive on the left side of the road.

He was in Britain. Again.

"Of course," he muttered.

Though it was, he reminded himself, better than Gallifrey, under Time-Lock, in the middle of an endless war.

He kept walking.

By now, it was getting dark, and his stomach was rumbling. Though he wasn't cold enough to be at risk from hypothermia, he was wet and miserable, and regretting ever leaving the TARDIS. He could have broken open the food dispenser; though the neutral base the food bars were made of was disgusting without added flavoring, at least it would have been better than going hungry. And he would have been out of the rain.

But he'd walked too far for turning back to make any sense, so he kept going.

In the dim light, he saw the wrapper from a sandwich, and picked it up. It was empty, of course. But there was a label printed on it, telling the consumer to "enjoy by March 31, 2013."

He balled it up and threw it back into the woods, cursing under his breath.

Less than five years ago, he'd been elected Prime Minister. And though he'd mocked these apes for their short memories it would be too much to hope for that he wouldn't be recognized.

If he believed in a sentient universe, he would have been convinced that it hated him. Or at least had a vicious sense of humor.

He kept trudging along the road, as the dingy afternoon faded to evening, and then to night.

It was approaching dawn when he finally spotted a petrol station with a small shop. It was closed, but so much the better.

He punched through the glass door, and then reached through to undo the lock.

He didn't spend long; just enough to snatch a few pre-wrapped sandwiches, a bottle of coke, and a packet of crisps. As an afterthought, he grabbed a few bars of chocolate flake.

Then he retreated into the woods, and waited for someone to answer the alarm.

He'd finished his first two sandwiches and the crisps, and nearly given up, when the police car pulled up to the kerb. The two officers hurried inside to check out the store, leaving their cruiser unattended, with the engine still running.

The Master slipped through the rain, ducked behind one of the pumps, and ran at a crouch to the far side of the car. The two officers were so intent on searching the store that they didn't even notice him.

He accelerated into the night.

After hours of trudging through a forest, he reached the edge of it in less than eight minutes. Three more minutes brought him to a suburb. He parked the police cruiser, searched it, and found absolutely nothing useful.

The rising wail of sirens told him that it was time to leave. There was probably a tracking device, so he abandoned the cruiser and took off at a run into the pre-dawn darkness.

After a few miles, he slowed to a walk; now that he'd cleared the search area, it was time to find a place to lie low. Steal a new set of clothes, one that wouldn't draw a ridiculous amount of attention to him.

He hopped a fence into a back yard, at random.

A striped cat looked up at him, but then went back to its patrol. Inside the house, a dog started yapping frantically. A woman's voice called out; "Lucy, shut it!" But the dog kept barking.

A light flickered on, illuminating a square of light; the Master ducked back. The last thing he needed was to be spotted; he'd rather avoid attention until he had the resources to deal with trouble, and leaving a trail of bodies would attract rather a lot of notice.

The door to the patio opened long enough for a small ball of fur to be ejected, and then slammed shut again. Twenty-seven seconds later, the light flicked off.

During this whole procedure, the dog kept up its barking. But it was smarter than its namesake; it kept its distance, and he wasn't going to chase a dog around the yard just to shut it up. Even if it was named Lucy.

He spotted a shed in the corner of the garden, and slipped inside, out of the rain. Not that it made much difference; his clothes were soaked through. But there was enough room (barely) to sit down, and he ate his last sandwich and one of the bars of flake and tried to plan his next move.

He couldn't go around looking like the former PM who'd gone mad, so his first step was a disguise. Preferably something more effective -- and stylish -- than the lamentable hoodie he'd worn during his last visit to Earth.

A visit to a costume shop would provide him with the latex he needed to alter his features. Maybe he could offer to trade the ridiculous, soaking-wet uniform for it? But that would leave him naked, which would be conspicuous in a completely different way.

A giggle worked its way up his throat; he clamped down on it before it turned into hysterical laughter. He hadn't slept, he realized, in eighty-three hours, seventeen minutes, and twenty-one seconds. Not that "beaten into unconsciousness" really counted as sleep.

Eventually, the dog gave up barking, and the Master dropped into an exhausted doze.

*

The ray of sunlight slanting into his eyes woke the Master from an unpleasant dream/memory of his brief time on Gallifrey. As uncomfortable as he was, sitting on the cold ground, squeezed between a push-mower and a stack of boxes, it was better than dying ... again ... in a time loop of the final days of the War.

He pushed himself to his feet, sore from the pounding he'd taken in the falling TARDIS. His body felt like one contiguous bruise, and the silence echoed in his skull.

He ate the last of the chocolate, and tried again to come up with a plan.

He needed a disguise, and he needed money. If he took care of one, the other would be easier: a few hundred dollars would buy him a basic latex disguise kit, and a few hundred more would get him a good suit. Those would be enough to get him more money.

He supposed he could find a costume shop and break in. But that would require either wandering around to find a shop, or getting access to the Internet long enough to look one up and then getting there.

Either way, he'd have to steal a car. And he didn't expect anyone would be polite enough to leave one running.

He peered out across the yard. There was a male in that household, so presumably there would be clothes that would, at least, be an improvement on the Chancellery Guard uniform, if only by being dry.

He saw no sign of Lucy-the-yapping-furball, and stepped out onto the grass.

The dog came racing around the corner, barking its head off. On the wall, the cat he'd seen the night before gave him a look as if to ask why he'd had to get it started again, yawned, and walked away.

Since the dog seemed to have no intention of getting close enough to bite, he ignored it and crossed to the sliding glass door. uOne solid kick shattered it, but before he could duck inside, an alarm went off.

He cursed under his breath, in sixteen different languages, as he fled the yard.

It didn't take him long to reach the center of what seemed to be a small English village. Only a few people were out on the streets, but they were all looking at him.

It was probably too much to hope for that they'd be so busy looking at his uniform to notice his face.

He ducked down a side street, out of sight, for the moment.

His gaze was drawn to a blue hatchback with its trunk and rear seat full of a jumble of things. It was old enough, he thought, that it probably wouldn't have any anti-theft devices. He looked around and picked up a rock, and used it to smash the side window. The same rock let him break the steering column open, and he turned the ignition.

A few minutes of aimless driving brought him to the motorway. For lack of any better destination, he headed south, toward London.

His luck was changing, he decided. He had three quarters of a tank of gas; enough to put plenty of road behind him before the car was discovered stolen.

He turned the radio on, pulled his helmet off, and settled in.

Two hours later, feeling a bit peckish, he stopped to see if there was anything to eat in the stacks of junk that filled most of the car. There was no food, but a plastic tub contained a rabbit costume, complete with a giant head.

He supposed it wouldn't attract any more attention than his current clothes. And with the helmet on, nobody would recognize him as the former Prime Minister.

He changed into the rabbit costume, which was at least dry, and got back on the road.

*

It was midafternoon by the time he reached the outskirts of London, and he had a plan. He found the nearest bank and parked outside. He watched until he saw a woman walking in with a little girl, about four or five years old.

He got out of the car, pulled on the rabbit head, and picked up the wicker basket. Then he walked across the street, and followed the mother and the daughter in.

"Mummy," the girl said. "It's the Easter Bunny!" She skipped over to him, a big gormless grin on her face.

He put a hand on her shoulder -- and then slid one hand under her chin. He shoved the basket toward her mother. "Have the tellers fill it with money -- small bills, not marked -- or I'll snap her neck."

The woman screamed, and crumpled to the ground in a dead faint.

He stood, dragging the girl with him. "All right, everybody listen. If you don't do exactly as I say, I'll break her neck. Do I make myself clear?"

The man at the nearest window nodded, and started emptying the drawer into the basket. Then he passed it along, and the Master started to think that the plan might actually work.

"Come on," he ordered. "Hurry up, I'm not a patient man!"

But the third teller's hands were shaking so badly that she dropped the money on the floor, taking precious minutes. His finely-honed senses could feel them passing.

Finally, though, the drawers were empty and the basket was full. He kept his grip on the girl, and pushed his way out of the door. All he had to do was make it back to the car -- 

Somewhere on the next street over, a car backfired, and something hit him in the chest.

It wasn't until he looked down and saw red soaking the white faux-fur that he realized; he'd been shot. Only then, he felt the familiar, agonizing burn of a bullet to the chest.

His knees buckled and he dropped to the ground. He tightened his grip on the girl's chin, ready to snap her neck out of sheer spite, but the strength went out of his hands. She dropped from his grasp and staggered back, eyes wide, and burst into tears.

So the brat would be traumatized for life. Good.

He toppled forward and landed, whiskers-first, on the pavement. Every breath hurt, but already the pinpoint burn of the hole in his chest was being drowned in the flames of artron energy flooding his body.

As regeneration turned his vision golden-bright with pain, he had time for one fleeting thought; at least he wouldn't have to worry about looking like the old Prime Minister anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Merkuri on Gallifrey Base made up a silly hypothetical to illustrate a point: 
> 
> "A lot of people want the Master to come back again. If I went through all of the available New Who material and picked out enough evidence to prove that the Master is in reality the Easter Bunny, and that this means the Master will come back when the show returns on March 30th (the day before Easter), I'd still get laughed out of the forum. No matter how credible my evidence was for the Master's secret identity, Doctor Who just doesn't do those types of things."
> 
> Naturally, I took this as a challenge and ran with it.


End file.
